Orphan

Reviewer: Jonathan Poritsky
Rating (out of 5): **

I don't really know what to make of a film whose strongest moment is its closing credits (although lifted conceptually from Kyle Cooper's Se7en opening, they really do pack a wallop). Orphan, directed by helmer Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax), spends seventy minutes poking around for a purpose, only to pick up the pace just before the third act shows up out of nowhere. It's a real shame because the film's ultimate revelation is conceptually strong.

The Answer Man

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

For anyone who suffers from the occasional bad back, a new to DVD film The Answer Man -- the first from writer/director John Hindman -- should be a must-see, if only to revel in the facial expressions of its star (a sublimely funny, nasty and so-real-it-hurts Jeff Daniels), as he suffers the moment-by-moment degradations of a spine askew. But there's a lot more going on in this light, bright--if also sometimes quite sad --romantic comedy, too.

Samuel Fuller Collection

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): *****

In his autobiography, filmmaker Samuel Fuller wrote that he did not speak a word for the first several years of his life, and then suddenly, at age 4 or 5, he blurted out the word "hammer!" The abruptness of this word, and its punchy imagery, practically defines Fuller's work.

He was a hard crime reporter as a teenager, and then a dogface soldier in World War II. He wrote books and stories and screenplays -- he called them all "yarns" -- filled with hammer-like dialogue and phrases and ideas. Due to the lurid subject matter and low budgets of his films, he rarely earned the respect and admiration he deserved (he never received a single Oscar nomination). Many of his films are still AWOL on DVD, but Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has taken a major step toward righting that wrong with The Samuel Fuller Collection, their extraordinary new seven-disc DVD box set.

Medicine for Melancholy

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***½

[Note: This review originally appeared on GreenCine Daily when film premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The widescreen DVD is out from MPI Home Video.]

I was wary of Barry Jenkins's film even before I even saw it. That's not his fault: I've simply gotten to the point, sadly, where I dread low-budget/indie films shot in my hometown, San Francisco, having sat through too many recently that made me want to claw my eyes out - and then having to nod and smile at the makers afterwards when the lights come on. And in the press notes for this film, "The City of San Francisco" is listed as one of three main characters, which made me worry even further. What's more, the very title is a bit tacked on - Jenkins confessed in an interview that he saw a character in Chloe in the Afternoon reading Ray Bradbury's book and thought it made a fitting title. Nothing inherently wrong with that; I was only disappointed there wasn't more to the reference in the film.

Despite my fears, Medicine for Melancholy, flawed though it may be, is a low-key revelation. Continue reading "Medicine for Melancholy"

Fados

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Fados shouldn't have worked; veteran Spanish director Carlos Saura (Cría cuervos, Tango) assembles a collection of fado singers and films them singing in front of colored backdrops. Sometimes the backdrops become more elaborate (such as a nightclub) and sometimes dancers accompany the music. These famous Portuguese ballads (currently undergoing a revival) have a long history, and are specifically related to poor and urban artists who expressed their yearnings in the most bittersweet ways. There is a certain structure to the songs and certain rules that must, more or less, be followed. Any lesser filmmaker would have traced the history of the music, dissecting it and trying to burrow inside all the songs.

Contest! Men Who Stare at Goats

In The Men Who Stare at Goats, a comedic look at real life events that are almost too bizarre to believe, a reporter (Ewan McGregor) discovers a top-secret wing of the U.S. military when he accompanies an enigmatic Special Forces operator (Academy Award-winner George Clooney) on a mind-boggling mission. The film's outstanding cast also includes: Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Robert Patrick, Stephen Root, Stephen Lang and Rebecca Mader. Men Who Stare at Goats, which opens November 6, is directed by Academy Award-nominated Grant Heslov (Good Night, and Good Luck) from a screenplay by Peter Straughan (How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) based on the book by Jon Ronson. And now, thanks to GreenCine and Focus Features, you can win our new Men Who Stare at Goats contest.

 One (1) very lucky winner will receive a copy of The Men Who Stare at Goats book and a movie T-Shirt.

To enter, email contest@greencine.com and include your name, email address, mailing address, and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Men Who Stare at Goats" in the subject header. Entries without all this information will not be considered. (You will not be added to a mailing list!). One winner will be selected at random from all valid entries. The deadline to enter is November16. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

See the official trailer below.

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap Box

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Goodness exists! You'll find it in a documentary recently released to DVD entitled Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox, directed by first-timer Sara Lamm, which not only made me a fan of the film but of the product itself -- a line of castile soaps -- that originally put the titular Dr. Bronner on the map. I would not be surprised to find other viewers, if they finish the film and watch some of the equally fascinating DVD extras, becoming fans of the docs (the documentary and the doctor), and of the soap.

Fear(s) of the Dark

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Rich, inventive, black-and-white animation (of the sort that puts to shame the neither-fish-nor-fowl, million-dollar color stuff that makes Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf such a bore) gets a go-round in Fears[s] of the Dark (Peur(s) du noir). This most interesting compilation of stories - some are self-contained while others wrap around the movie in strange and witty ways - is artful, often gorgeous to look at, and clever in the manner in which it makes its points and ties things together.

What it is not is scary. At all. Which is fine by me. I'll take my scares in live-action movies, thank you. Perhaps I am no longer able to be frightened by animated films. I recall being so by Disney's Fantasia when I saw it as a very young boy, but the flat, two-dimensional artwork on view in this movie will appeal more to animation connoisseurs than to folks looking for a fright. Yet there is plenty to enjoy for ancillary reasons.

Monsoon Wedding (Criterion)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, just out in a new 2-DVD set from Criterion, is the India native's contribution to the unofficial canon of directors' final works from the homeland before emigrating to the United States. Like Milos Forman's Fireman's Ball, Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart or Susanne Bier's After the Wedding, Monsoon presents the complex story of a multi-faceted, changing nation through a single tight-knit community. The community here being an upper-middle class Punjabi family converging in New Delhi for an elaborate wedding.

Objectified

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Design is all around us, as anyone who has ever been responsible for creating a design realizes early on. While many of us most often think about design in terms of the art we observe –- paintings, magazines, movies, home interiors -- it is present and every bit as important in the everyday things we use: toothbrushes, computers, potato peelers and the like. Gary Hustwit, the guy who gave use the fine documentary about typeface called Helvetica [review] (after the famous font), is back again with an equally wonderful example of the genre, Objectified, that turns our attention to the many objects we encounter in our daily lives and then shows us how vital good design is to how these objects work -- and how they affect us for better or worse.

Adoration

Reviewer: Jonathan Poritsky
Rating (out of 5): **½

Give Atom Egoyan 110 minutes and he’ll give you a handful of unrealized MacGuffins and a whole big piece of his mind. Adoration, just out on DVD, spends more time dabbling in the soft art of misdirection than actually resolving a plot. In fairness, the film does portray our current technological moment (and the teenagers who are its biggest beneficiaries) quite accurately. If only the film's overarching message of our tech-induced de-sensitivity weren’t so 1995 (hello The Net).

The skeletal plot takes off at a saunter as orphaned high school student Simon (Devon Bostick) begins telling his friends a tale of his father’s supposed terrorist tendencies, which resulted in the near-bombing of an airplane and the death of his mother. Living with his financially strained Uncle Tom (Scott Speedman, The Strangers, Underworld), Simon’s story attracts an ever growing internet audience of kids, pundits, intellectuals, ideologues and other talking heads. Can fundamentalism be legitimized? Humanized? Are the people who survived the non-plane crash victims in their own rite? These questions and more grow alongside a confused plot regarding Simon’s family history and his mysteriously doting French teacher, Sabine (Egoyan's wife and frequent star Arsinée Khanjian).